Category Archives: Remembering

Happy Birthday to Nelson

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Today is Nelson’s birthday. Well, it was.

Being in Paradise as he is, he’s been given the supernatural gift of agelessness. No matter how old the rest of us get, Nelson will never age past 49. But each year when his birthday came around, planning a party was always last choice on his list. He believed what his grandpa had told him long ago, that birthdays shouldn’t be a big deal, because everyone had one every year.

But as the years passed, Nelson touched lightly on growing older in his journal entries. He also used these diaries to puzzle through problems by way of written words. Each page, then, was a mix of thinking and praying “out loud.”  

 

These journals now belong to Ann Sophie, and though she wouldn’t have looked into them while Nelson was still with us, now she’s free to read . As she and Astrid, little Will and I have commemorated Nelson’s birthday here in Minnesota today, we’ve enjoyed reading aloud from his writings, sometimes laughing through our tears, and sometimes finding surprises. Here’s an entry from the day before his birthday, written one year ago, shortly before cancer invaded his world:

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Thursday 1/25/2022 7:08 PM

I turn 49 tomorrow. We’re having a baby boy in March, which is about to be next month. New things are happening, and yesterday a possible door opened for a career change I sort of looked for, but didn’t do more than talk about.

Tim, our electrical on campus has been working for us a lot. I’ve seen him, talked to him, and fantasized about getting a trade I could use anywhere to work and supply for my family, and have fun doing it.

I’ve been in “ministry” for a long time and You have supplied for me there without question, Lord. We have always more freedom and more than enough money. We have connections in YWAM all over the place, and it’s our home for now.

The apartment we have is great and the campus seems happy to have us. However, I have been praying and fasting about how to handle having a baby and if anything should change. 

Yesterday, I saw Tim walking by building D and asked him for a job, essentially, and he said he’s short guys and would work out a deal with me for between $18-25 hr. It would take me 3 years to get my journeyman’s license to go out on my own, if I wanted to. Really, that’s my goal.

I have thought about what it would be like to pastor the church and work a normal job, sort of a bi-vocational existence. You don’t know until you try. Annso says she has to be forced into her blessings, or something like that, and she trusts me to make the right choice. 

But it doesn’t seem possible to staff the Kokua Crew and work 7-3, M-F for another outfit.

I pray, Lord, that you would make it clear what I should do with this opportunity. Should I take it? Would that mean leaving YWAM altogether? Could Annso stay on staff technically and I be off? Could that work having a new baby? Didn’t we want her to be totally off staff? Would that mean we are done with BBC [Brentwood Baptist Church]?

I pray, Lord, you would expose any ulterior motive, but be merciful. We are all motivated selfishly and out of pride when it comes down to it. I have been given these premonitions before and you have led me when I didn’t know where I was going and it didn’t make sense.

Friday, 1/26/2022, Nelson’s birthday

Today is my 49th birthday. I lost track a little in there and thought maybe I was turning fifty. I am becoming a father at 49. How about that. Might even do a career change this year too. How crazy would that be?

Annso and I prayed about the offer with Tim to work and start becoming an electrician, and seemed to get a yes. She is reluctant because it’s a change, and I have to make it attractive to her, too. For me it helps us in lots of ways and gives us a break from YWAM, which we both need. Allows us to continue to pastor the Little Red Church, which I have always wanted to do. 

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Nelson recorded these notes/prayers one year ago today. He had no idea it would be his last birthday. But for him, the clocking of time has ended, and eternity has begun. Actually, eternity has begun for the rest of us, too. But with our feet still firmly planted in this world, we can’t yet see it as clearly as he does.

“This is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

Obituary of Nelson Hamilton Nyman

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Nelson Hamilton Nyman was a young man who had much to live for with a wife he adored and a new baby boy, his first child. He fought to live with all the determination of a warrior, but in the end, God had a different plan and took him to heaven “early.” On Christmas morning, 2022, Nelson quietly left us.

He was born in Chicago, on January 26, 1973, weighing in at 10 pounds. His noteworthy start was an indication that he would live a large life all the way through, and he did. His family raised him in the Chicago suburbs where he attended Christian Liberty Academy through his elementary years, followed by Hersey High School, both in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Nelson loved working with his hands and working hard, especially outdoors. He delighted in solving problems, whether by repairing an old car, scraping moss off a roof, or best of all, helping others mend relationships.

He and a cousin began a lawn mowing business while still in high school, learning how to do far more than just cut grass. Because both of them were of Swedish heritage, they named their business Scandinavian Lawn. Through the years, they mastered every gardening skill there is and also learned how to balance books and how to keep customers happy. In and out of college during those years, Nelson eventually graduated from Anderson University in Indiana with a Bachelor’s Degree in psychology and a minor in criminal justice, but a desk job was not for him.

In choosing a place to settle after college, he decided to sell his Illinois landscaping business to his brother and move to Tennessee—where the summers are long and a landscaper can work most of the year. Nelson loved country music and landed in the musical capitol of the nation, Nashville. There he began landscaping in earnest, growing his business to include several employees and 80 customers. Even with this success, though, his heart was being tugged in a new direction.

As a little boy of five, Nelson invited Jesus into his heart and life. He attended Sunday school and church every week with his family and found it all fascinating. Throughout his growing-up years he remained conscious of God, His Word, and how he ought to live as a Christian. In his early adulthood, however, he sometimes strayed but would always find his way back to the Lord.

About then, he met several friends who had spent time in Kona, Hawaii, at a Christian organization called Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and wondered if he should try it, too. During the off-season of landscaping, he ventured to Hawaii, taking classes and working at the YWAM campus in Kona. To his great delight, he discovered he could travel the world with YWAM while spreading the good news of God’s Gospel as he went. So once again Nelson sold Scandinavian Lawn and committed to working in the YWAM ministry. He led different groups through a variety of countries and cultures, filling an assortment of positions while 13 years passed. He loved his work, each new day different from the one before, but more than that, he grew to love Jesus Christ with a passion that never dimmed.

Eventually he took a position that was anchored in Kona, running a YWAM program with 50-100 young adults from all over the world, guiding them spiritually while managing their work hours on the campus. It was in this position that lightning struck when he met a new staffer from Germany. Ann Sophie was assigned to work alongside Nelson, and it wasn’t long before co-workers were commenting about the electricity between them. A year later they were married in Kona, both dedicated to continuing their missionary work there—now as a team.

But last March, Nelson began feeling poorly. Their baby boy, Will, had just been born, and he was overwhelmed with joy to have become a father. The day of his cancer diagnosis was a challenge beyond all others, a crushing disappointment invading the happiest time of his life. In May of this year they left Hawaii, landing at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for treatment. God chose a path for him that neither he, Ann Sophie, nor little Will would ever have chosen, but he decided not to ask “why” but to leave the reason with God. No doubt his new home in Paradise includes satisfying answers to many of his questions. His family will have to wait to hear them, but they are confident that one day they’ll all be together again. Their farewell wasn’t permanent….just “goodbye for now.”

Nelson is survived by his wife (Ann Sophie), his son (Willard Nelson), his mother (Margaret), six siblings( Lars, Linnea [m. Adam], Klaus, Hans [m. Katy], Louisa [m. Teddy] and Birgitta [m. Spencer]), 15 nieces and nephews, two uncles (Kenneth and Bervin), and 16 cousins.

My Friend Nel

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Growing up, I (Hans) viewed my eldest brother, Nel, as the biggest of my big brothers. We were nine years apart.

From my childlike vantage point he was an august and likable personality, though also somewhat distant and unpredictable. However, in time, I would go on to develop an enduring bond of friendship with Nel, a friendship that has proved to be one of the most formative relationships of my life.  

It happened that, after I had graduated high-school, I moved down south to study at Belmont University, which is located in Nashville Tennessee, a place where Nel lived at the time. It didn’t take long before, in addition to my studies, I was employed in Nel’s lawncare business on the weekends to earn some extra cash.

(L. to R. Nels, Hans, Lars, Klaus)

It was in this context – living far from my childhood home for the first time – mowing grass, sharing meals, telling stories, mowing grass, drinking coffee, listening to and talking about music together, and mowing yet more grass, that my friendship with Nel was sealed. In addition to working well alongside one another, we went on boating adventures, road trips, we camped, and generally held court in all sorts of places together, animatedly discoursing about all sorts of subjects with mutual delight.  

Nel and I have quite different personalities. He is naturally intrepid, practically minded, with an aptitude for logistics, and restless for motion. I am naturally more contemplative, a reader, cautious, imaginatively minded rather than pragmatic. However, we do share our family upbringing and a common Christian faith.

Also, we both were born with minds that just about never stop thinking and we process externally, having the habit of ‘test-driving’ our thoughts and feelings aloud in the process of working out what we believe and how we should live. Apparently, a measure of difference, mixed with some similarities and shared experience, is a sufficient chemistry for a good friendship. 

On account of Nel, I was encouraged to make the move away from home and grow in independence as a man. Nel listened to me and showed me respect. Nel trusted me, as a 20-year old, to run his lawn care business for a month whilst he was travelling in India one summer. It was on the strength of Nel’s reputation that I got a job back up North after leaving college.

It was Nel who, through his travelling stories, encouraged me to look to the horizon and consider the big wide world out there, full of different people from other cultures with different customs and histories. It was Nel who told me about YWAM (Youth With A Mission) and encouraged me to seek God by giving it a try (I met my English wife in New Zealand doing a Discipleship Training School and we now live in England with our six wonderful children and have been happily married for fifteen years– thanks Nel!).  

Nobody asks to be born. God determines it. We simply find ourselves, having been born, alive in a particular family embedded within a wider cultural context. Yet, the scriptural narrative is that God’s love abounds to all people and that he is reconciling the world to himself in Christ. Moreover, this amazing work of God is carried out amidst the familiar personalities and routines of our lives. I can attest that God worked graciously in my life through Nelson as a part of his story of redemption, and continues to do so. 

“[God has] determined allotted periods and the boundaries of [peoples’] dwelling place[s], that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:26-27)